Context

"Grey Day" or "Grade A"? One of the thing I learnt during my few years working for a speech recognition company was that context is everything. Only if you know whether you're talking about quality or weather can you hope to distinguish the two phrases aurally.

Weather was grey.

Quality was grey today too. I tried to buy a prime 35mm lens...

All my usual suppliers were out of stock (and the local 'offline' shop's response was largely along the lines of "a Sony?"). I rummaged and thought I'd try Jacobs Digital. It's a long time since I've had such a disappointing customer 'service'.

The website prevents separate billing and delivery addresses. This is impractical so I emailed and eventually was told I could fax a letterhead to them...

I placed the order - then got an email saying out of stock. Strange, that's not what the web site said. I could have one next week, but no they wouldn't waive the 'next day' postage charge in exchange for keeping the order.

I cancelled: both the order and all future interest in them.

--
The evening was the monthly Quaker Meeting for Worship for Business. We have many committees but core decisions are made by the whole Meeting in a spirit of listening to each other and to God. It's an incredibly powerful method, if a tad slow at times. We're wrestling with a reorganisation proposal - the discernment continues next month.